


Nightfalls | Hyunchan

by Pullandfox



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: M/M, Strangers to Lovers, hyunchan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:02:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22084597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pullandfox/pseuds/Pullandfox
Summary: "It's in the breeze of a summer night that their gazes are linked. It's under the sky of a summer night that it becomes something for a lifetime."━━━◦◌.•⋅◌ ☼ ◌⋅•.◌◦━━━
Relationships: Bang Chan/Hwang Hyunjin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 45





	1. Dark Night

•  
•

It was during one of those hot summer nights that I was running. I was running for an unnamed goal. I was running to spit my lungs out. I was running for nothing in one of those sleepy streets where the darkness of the sky made everything desolate. The shutters were closed. The plants were faded. And even the weak light of the lamp post couldn't give back a semblance of life. It didn't even illuminate the night. It let the lunar and stellar lights do it. But the world was still dark. And the streets were sad. The streets were empty. We could only hear my erratic breath and the only movements were those of my shadow.

And I was running out of breath. Because my mother became senile. It was the old age that invaded her day by day. It was her dementia that invaded the world. It invaded the atmosphere, it took all the space in the apartment. And it was her dementia that crushed me. I just couldn't stay there anymore. At home. I couldn't stay between the sharp glass debris and the half-empty bottles of alcohol. It was these yellowish fluids that made everything worse, that made her livid. Because apparently, for her, dementia wasn't enough. We had to add more. We had to add a few drops of absinthe in her blood. Just to be a little more violent and to lose even more control of her life.

I could have been blamed for everything, I wouldn't have stayed. "Hyunjin, it's your mother anyway." I'm her son, and yet? "It's not her fault". Drops of alcohol burn her throat by themselves? "You run away when she needs help?". What about me, if I needed help? Did I need help? I needed help.

I needed to live. Maybe it was selfish, but I needed to live. To breathe. To smell something other than the smell of poorly extinguished cigarettes and past rum for centuries. I was oppressed for years. Nineteen years of my life where I did what I was told to. I pretended it wasn't her fault. It wasn't, in part. But there were those things that were all her. And I couldn't do anything about it. No one could do anything about it. I never ran away. I've had opportunities. Oh, yes, I've had some. But I never could. I've never managed to put a foot on one side of the window. Then the other on the other side. I never managed to jump to land on a burning asphalt that could take me anywhere, where I wanted to.

Except for that night. It was during that summer night that I made it. It certainly wasn't for long. Maybe a day, maybe two. Maybe even for that night. I felt like I was floating in the sky. I felt like I was free for a moment. And I stopped running for a few more moments. I inspired. I expired. The fresh air filled my lungs. The light breeze came across my face, which had become wet. It flew some of my hair strands around. I didn't even have an interest in noticing it, but I wanted to keep in my mind each of these moments. My heart was beating too fast. My breath was calming down. My hair was flying off. And cracks.

There were squeaking that came to break the silence. Or rather, they came to harmonize with my breath. In the surroundings, it was the only sound. I turned my head to the right and to the left. But there was nothing and nobody. There were only two streets, each darker than the other. So I took the one on the right. I continued to walk along the ivy-filled stone walls and then turned right again. I was lost in this maze of streets I knew very well. But I didn't even think about how far I was going. I just let myself be carried by the loud sound that rang in my head.

And at the turn of one of these paths, I came in front of the park. It was the park of my childhood. It was the one that made me remember memories that seemed happy, just by watching it. There were memories of me sliding from the top of the toboggan and my mother, catching up with me downstairs. That was the time when it was okay. Or I was too young to realize it. I guess that was it. It never went well for her, but I once believed her.

In the middle of my memories, there was the rusty swing. And he was sitting. He was barely swaying back and forth, grinding the metal thousands of times. At his feet, there were empty cans in which he would hit his black sneakers every time he got to their level. One of his hands held a bottle, but from where I was, still hidden in the shade, I couldn't read the label. On the other hand, he held the ropes so as not to lose balance. I saw the relief of his veins and the shadow they created on his hand. And his face looked nostalgic, melancholic. He was wearing an expression that I had trouble deciphering. His blonde hair fell before his eyes. And even the light from the lamp post that lit him didn't rival him. He was illuminating the scenery.

There was a kind of invisible attraction that got me out of the dark. I approached, without saying a word, and he raised his head up to me. His eyes tied to mine. And I felt like I was reading his sadness. It didn't look so deep. But I didn't know. I didn't know anything. However there was something in his eyes that made me say not everything was fine. Anyway, to stay on a creaking swing, kicking in a can, it was surely because not everything was all right.

"Do you want it?"

He told me that by holding the bottle in his hand. It was rum. The same bottle that was hanging around my house on the floor. It was exactly the same. Maybe ten years younger. But it was it.

"No thanks."

"You're the first person I'm seeing here tonight."

His voice was nice to hear. It was nicer than the squeaks of a children's game. Without answering, I sat on the other swing, next to him. And I started to swing around in the dark night.

"Do you allow me to... know your name? Your first name?"

"Hyunjin. It's Hyunjin."

"Nice name for a pretty boy. If you ask, my name is Chan."

I've whispered a "thank you" I'm sure was not really audible. I could have told him the same thing. I could've told him Chan was pretty for a boy who lit a dark night but I preferred to remain silent. He got something that prevented me from telling him that.

"What are you doing here, Hyunjin?"

"I'm running away."

"So, you are running away but you're not moving right now?"

"I was fleeing and then I heard the swing. So I came and I saw you."

"And you stayed."

He smiled. With all his teeth and towards me. I don't know if he really smiled for me, but that seemed to be this. We were alone. Except if he smiled in the void or smiled for the dark sky. But I don't think so. I think he was only smiling for me.

"What about you, Chan?"

"I'm walking. I'm swinging. I'm drinking. Are you sure you don't want it?"

"I'm sure."

"Too bad."

He brought the bottle to his lips. They were pink and rather pulpy. He let a few centiliters go down his throat and he kept talking.

"With that, I'm trying to pass a shit pain. Something a bit useless that won't even deserve to get drunk. But I don't see how else to do it."

"Something a bit bad... like what?"

"Like my girlfriend... if I can call her that? No, no. A girl I slept with a few times and kissed thousands of times. She thought my father was better than me. I don't know if he's fucking better or something like that, but apparently he is."

"Did you see them?"

"I was a witness, yeah."

"That's not cool."

"That's shit. And you, Hyunjin, why are you running away?"

"I'm running away to avoid receiving pieces of glass from this bottle."

"That's why you don't want it?"

"Yes."

"That's creepy."

"That's shit."

And this time he laughed. His laughter was even nicer than his voice. It was an even prettier melody to hear.

"But... For this girl, I'll get over it. She was a girl in one life. Not the woman of my life. She is more for my father, maybe."

"What an idiot."

"That's almost a word too weak."

"What an asshole then."

"What an asshole."

Right after, Chan got up. He grabbed one of the cans lying on the floor before sending it with all his strength to the opposite wall. I was surprised. But it was a normal gesture. It was a gesture that reflected his anger. And he did it again. He continued with two or three other cans before stopping and falling back on the gravel-covered ground. He blew all the fresh air in his lungs. He exhaled once, twice, three times before whispering a "whore".

And then he got up. He smiled at me. I smiled back. And I thought that there, I was free. There, I was breathing. There was always this smell of rum floating in the air, but I didn't mind. I didn't mind anymore. I don't know what he was feeling about that, but I was fine.

"Hyunjin, it's just a stupid thing. I have to go see him. I gotta go see him."

"In the middle of the night?"

"Yes, I don't care. Do you think tomorrow you'll be here?"

"And you, you'll be there?"

"If you come, you'll find me here."

And he went away, leaving his bottle of rum on the floor. He was illuminating his path and he left me in the dark night, alone.


	2. Cold Night

•  
•

During the rest of the night I started with Chan, I didn't do many things. I just walked alone through the alleys of a sleeping city because I didn't dare to leave. Yet I had believed it. I thought I could leave my mother to her own fate by letting her degenerate in 30 square meters. I thought I was strong for a few moments but this feeling quickly subsided. It was the one of compassion that had taken its place, even though I was doing everything to not feel an ounce of it towards her. She had never felt any semblance of compassion for her family in her entire life, I didn't owe her anything. It was hard but I tried to do everything I could to avoid it taking up too much space in my heart. There was no place for it. But even if that night I had been able to get rid of that feeling, I wouldn't have left.

I couldn't leave alone without a place to stay, without some food, without anything. I hadn't planned anything. Everything was still in place in my room. My phone was lost in the meanderings of my sheets, I just had an old black T-shirt on me, shorts a bit too big and the worst of all, it was that I was deprived of everything that could come close to money in any way. I had nothing material. And I didn't have anyone to rely on either. The only ones were just friends, classmates who lived in the same city as me and with whom I could get along pretty well. But they had a life that worked. They didn't have to avoid glass splinters when they went into their rooms, nor did they have to wake up their mothers who were bathed in the alcohol they had tried to swallow as best they could. So yes, everyone has problems in their lives. There is always something that spoils a family's harmony, but no one had a situation like mine. I knew it. I really knew it. I wasn't saying anything without proof, it was something obvious that I had observed almost all my life. And they would never leave the loving homes in which they had lived to go with a guy like me who didn't have a plan.

It was on a bench on the outskirts of town, when the sun was starting to appear high in the sky, that I thought of Chan. I didn't know him at all. I had never even seen him, never met him at the bend of a street or a shop. I knew his family situation even less well, except for what he had kindly told me with his father. But I had this feeling that it was only a small part of the problems. And deep down, I was hoping I wasn't wrong. Because I could see myself going to the edge of the world with him. He had only lined up a hundred words, but that was more than enough for me to realize that I liked him.

And then, he was handsome. Was that a valid reason to want to spend time with him? Yes, but not only that, of course. The reasons were the small part of his personality that I had discovered and the fact that his face was like... perfect. In my eyes. But surely in the eyes of many more people too. He had pretty red lips, far too colorful for the complexion of his skin, which was closer to white than anything else. But it was pretty, it was beautiful on him. I couldn't deny that. It was like a rose planted in a snowy setting. And it was beautiful.

I finally decided to get up from that bench, the one where I had thought about meeting Chan, when the melody of the birds came into my ears. And I kept wandering through alleys that didn't even have a name. Around it, the world was getting a little more agitated. The light of the sky passed between the houses and lit up my face, which must have been scary to see. I must have had huge dark circles under my eyes, caused by fatigue. My hair must have been in any direction, completely messy. But it was nothing, it was not a big deal. People might have been staring at me, but they wouldn't say anything more.

This day, I finished it asleep in the shade of a large oak tree on the small hill overlooking the old houses. I knew no one would bother me there. Then I lay down between the wet grass and the few summer flowers and I stared at the leaf sky above my face until my eyes closed with fatigue. And I dreamed of freedom.

It must have been 7:00 p. m. when I woke up from sleep. The sky was already turning pink again, I hadn't even seen it being blue because I had slept so much. I went down the summer flower hill again to arrive in a city that was already losing its breath. There was almost no more the sound of car engines or the laughter of children running through the cobbled streets of the city center. After a few meters, I arrived in front of this not very fit and a little old building that housed what could be called my "house". The place where I slept, it wasn't really a home. I walked down the ground floor under the faulty lights of the bulbs, to the end of the hallway and arrived at the front door. And it wasn't even close.

"Mom?"

Silence. No one answered me. So I went in quietly and went back to my room avoiding the shards of bottles, the half-empty medicine tablets and the crushed cigarette butts. In one of the closets that didn't lock properly, there was the backpack that I had used for high school. As I hadn't done a study after the end of high school, he stayed there, in the fullest darkness and under a ton of dust. It felt weird to take it out. At the same time, I was opening a new memory drawer. They were the ones from my teenage years, a little tumultuous and not really calm. Inside there were still some of my stuff from that time, such as a lighter, old package of tissues not even opened and an almost torn bill. I decided to keep everything and added some clothes and my phone charger, some money I had hidden in the lining of my curtain, my keys and some cakes.

I didn't leave that night, I just packed my things. This bag, I put it under my window. That way, when I come back to get it I could run away and it would be much easier, I wouldn't have to walk through the living room at the risk of my mother seeing me. On top of that I put a sheet that didn't hide anything but I knew that my mother wouldn't notice anything as she was turning to medication and alcohol. And after a quick shower, I walked out of the apartment slamming the door.

That night, the second night after my semblance of freedom, it was cold. I was too cold. The wind had risen and it was whipping my naked arms and legs. I walked in that cold night for a few moments before arriving at this park, where a silhouette that cuts through the light was swaying.

"Chan!"

I wasn't even really screaming, I was too afraid to open my mouth too wide and invade the inside of my body with this icy wind. But he heard me because he raised his black eyes to me. On his face, there was a large red trace that crossed his cheek. I approached him and he whispered my name, a smile hanging on his lips.

"Hyunjin. You're here."

"Chan, I'm here. It didn't go well yesterday, I suppose? Since you have this."

I squatted down in front of him and touched the scratch with my frozen fingers, on his burning skin. It was not very deep but it contrasted so much with his skin that I could almost only see that.

"I kicked his ass."

"Well done. Is that all he did to you?"

"That's it. He was too high on drugs to defend himself."

"I want to say that it's good for you, but... not very fine for the situation."

"Well, you can say whatever you want. I just want him to disappear from my life. He does a lot of horrible things, not just sleep with my friends or something. That's only part of the problem."

"You have a father who doesn't give a shit about you, is that it?"

"Totally."

Chan smiled but it was a smile full of bitterness. It was a smile that reflected all the sadness in the world. He kept talking but his face had changed. His features had hardened.

"I've been working since I was 16 years old in more or less suspicious things to have a minimum living, but he spent everything on drugs, hard or soft, any kind. Tragic, huh?"

"Tragic, yes. I'm experiencing something like that too. But my grandparents are sending me money. Not to my mother, but to me, because they know how she is."

"What do you mean?"

"Irresponsible. Senile. Without life. Anything you want as rather negative adjectives."

"They'd be great together, then."

"Completely. I think we have the same shitty life."

"It's not a coincidence if we met last night."

"Do you think so?"

"I'm sure. I'm sure it's fate, Hyunjin. Only fate can put me on the path of someone like you. There's no coincidence in the equation."

"Boom. Two strangers who meet."

"And maybe they will find the solution to the problem?"

"I hope so."

And this time I didn't dream of freedom. It was no longer a dream, I really felt like I was touching it with my icy fingertips. Maybe it was fate that premeditated all of this, I don't know. But in any case, I was free. And I wanted to take the liberty of kissing him. That was bullshit, wasn't it? Was it? I think it was. I don't know, actually. But I was afraid. And I was cold. My heart was shaken, my body was shivering and my lips were shaking. I don't know if it was fear or cold, but they were just shaking.

In the end, I didn't have to do anything. Because it was his hot lips that warmed mine.


	3. Light Night

•  
•

I've never had a real relationship. The kind of relationship thats hit you in the guts, turns your heart around and leaves a nameless mess in your feelings. Yes, I had a few experiences in my adolescence, but none of those things made me drunk in a kiss. In 11th grade, there was this guy, a little brunette who was lost in his life as much as I was in mine. We weren't even officially a couple or something like that, we were just together out of school in the not-so-cool and a bit shady areas of the city. But neither he nor I were really stable, so we matched well with this kind of place. And we weren't very communicative either. When we stopped kissing each other's lips and body, we talked a little bit but it was clearly more for fucking than anything else. And I didn't really mind, I expected it and I chose it.

And at the beginning of the year there was this girl. She was so beautiful that I'm sure the stars were jealous up there. She was so beautiful, cute, nice... And friendly too, we could talk for hours without getting bored. She was perfect. But she was too perfect. She was so perfect that I didn't dare to tell her the truth about my life. It would've done just a flow in her pearly world. So I lied. I lied during the two months we spent seeing each other. Those two months after she kissed me in torrential rain. She never came to my house because I was ashamed and she didn't hear about my parents either. But of course, between some sweet kisses and violent lies, she realized that. And I wasn't even sad when she dumped me. Again, I knew it. I expected it.

I didn't have relationships that made me drunk in a kiss until Chan put one on my lips. It was crazy, wasn't it? But I felt like I had emptied all the bottles of alcohol that were dragging around my house in a few milliseconds. If I could have died of drunk love there, I would have.

When he kissed me, his fingers slipped along my jaw that was still shaking. And every part of his skin that touched mine was just a new firework that was exploding more and more. It was throwing heat peaks all over my body as he just touched the contours of my face. I was drunk on his kiss and drunk at his contact. My heart was missing too many beats. My hands were laid I don't know where, somewhere on his body, probably on his hips. And I wondered if he, too, felt like he was exploding under the touch of my fingers.

When he walked away, I felt such a void that I was afraid of it. I was afraid of becoming like her. Did my mother feel the same way when her bottles were taken away? Did she feel like she was as drunk as I was after that kiss? If she was like me, maybe I understood her a bit. I understood why she didn't want to stop and why she was abusing alcohol so much. Drunkenness made you addicted. Romantic drunkenness, too, apparently.

Chan kissed me a second time after taking a breath and he whispered something like "I don't know what I'm doing". Yes, something like that. I don't remember exactly, I wasn't focused enough to remember each of his words. I said, "I don't know too" and he said " But I like it." And me too, I liked it so much . It was not too logical and a little too sudden, but against his lips I whispered:

"Chan, don't you want to leave?"

" To go where ? And when ?"

" Come with me, to the edge of the world and now, right now."

"You really wanted to run away, it wasn't empty words."

"Not at all. I want to do that for years now."

"Why not before then?"

"I was quite too young. Today is perfect and I'm not alone."

"I'm here?"

"You're here."

"And do you think I'll go with you?"

"I don't know... if you don't want it, Chan, it's okay. I don't know how I'll do without you, but it's okay."

"If it really was fate that made us meet Hyunjin, I just have to follow you."

"Really ?"

"Of course. Can we go to my house before ?"

" Yes, and to my house too. I've got things already packed. »

He dropped the swing to stand up and I stood up too before joining him. I put all the love buried in my heart in the kiss I gave him. Was I in love? No, I don't think so. I don't know what I was with him except a stranger. But even stranger didn't match. It wasn't him and me, strangers...It was something else, but I think neither he nor I were able to describe the situation at that time.

Without thinking more than before, we went at my home first, to pick up the backpack I had prepared. I didn't even have to go into the apartment. I just opened the window that I didn't lock, I put my hand in to catch my bag and closed it. When I closed the window, I felt like I was breaking a part of my heart. I actually think it wasn't an impression, it really happened. But it was normal, I left everything I had, even if it wasn't so much.

It was when we came to Chan's house, a small shanty that was not very big or really strong, that I realized what we were doing. We were leaving. We were disappearing. I was leaving with someone I didn't know to an unknow place and we had nothing. Almost nothing. Chan opened the door and he said me to follow him. It was lifeless, his father wasn't there.

"Do you know where he is?"

"I don't know at all."

He answered me as if he didn't care, but I would have sworn I've heard a bit of emotions in his voice. I said nothing, it was better for him. We walked into the rooms that were filled with drugs scent, the smell was embedded between the parquet floors and the walls. And we went to his room which, unlike the rest of the house, was perfectly tidy. Chan grabbed some clothes in his wardrobe that he put in a rather large sports bag and added his wallet, the almost empty bottle of rum and money that was hidden in his room. Quite like me. And he grabbed some keys, for a car.

"Do you have a car?"

"An old card recovered before it breaks. Not powerful, but it's rolling, we need that, right?" he smiled at me before he put his hand in my hair.

It was nothing but a gesture. One hand. Hair. A contact. But it did something to me. Inexplicable. As usual.

We stayed for another ten minutes until Chan picked up some useful items on the right to the left in each room like books, his favorites he told me, toiletries and a mini fan. We went out after he closed his sports bag and walked a few meters down the street of his house to get in front of an old car not that ugly. It was a mint color, although in some places the paint was skinned. It had its vintage style and it was pretty, so pretty.

We put our two bags in the back, Chan sat behind the wheel and I sat on the side of the passenger. He turned the keys, the engine started to spin and I turned on the radio. The notes of a 1960s rock song soared into the air as we, two lost guys who were going nowhere, got on the road without a single map to know where we were heading.

I slept for the rest of the trip. I don't even know how long it lasted. But when I woke up, the sun was barely on the horizon, it wasn't even up yet. I had slept all night, sitting on the side of the passenger. When I was able to open my eyes properly without being blinded by the light too strong that burned my eyes, I saw a shadow. Chan was sitting in front of the car. And the soundtrack of this view, which I thought was too pretty, was the sound of waves crashing against the cliff where the car was parked and the noise of the leaves of the faraway trees.

"Chan!" I yelled at the window that was open.

When he heard my voice, he immediately got up and I rushed out of the car. And we kissed, again, not for the last time. His lips were soft and as red as before. In the bright night, the moment the sun rose and the moon fell down, it was beautiful.

"How long have we been here?"

"We drove only four hours, so yes, you slept quite a while" he laughed. "You even talked during your sleep."

"What did I say?"

"You whispered something like... "Chan is too beautiful"."

"That's not true! I'm sure I didn't say that. Not in my dreams, just in my thoughts."

"That's right, you didn't say that. But I'm sure one day you'll say it."

"Like today? Chan, you're too beautiful."

"Like today."

We sat on the blanket that he had unfolded on the ground and watched the sky rise for a few minutes. I ended up diving my head against his chest and Chan kissed the top. I put my arms around his waist and I hugged him as hard as I could. He did the same thing, he surrounded me with his arms and in those arms, even though I couldn't really move at that time, I felt free. I was free. And I was living.

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this story!


End file.
